Effect of internal partition on a naturally cross-ventilated generic building using computational fluid dynamics

This research focuses on investigating the characteristic of natural ventilation for an isolated building particularly on the air velocity and flow rate. It involves a numerical analysis using computational fluid dynamics for a generic building configuration with internal obstacles and under natural ventilation conditions. Internal obstacles within the building were modeled as internal partition walls with varying widths. Five different external opening configurations were considered: top-top, middle-middle, bottom-bottom, top-bottom and bottom-top. Atmospheric boundary layer conditions were imposed at the inlet plane and the 3-D Steady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations were solved with the Standard k-ε model coupled with enhanced wall treatment. Results show that the highest dimensionless flow rate (DFR) is recorded at 0.568 for the top-top opening position without obstacle, while it is also observed that the varying internal obstacles have substantial impact to the DFR. Hence, it could be concluded that ignoring the effects of partition walls or internal obstacles in the study of natural ventilation can underestimate the DFR by as much as 11.2% as compared to an empty building setup. The study is able to provide useful information on the airflow characteristics for the natural ventilation application in the building sector.